


Incision

by varooooom



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: M/M, Spoilers, ish, post - The Winter Soldier
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-18
Updated: 2014-04-18
Packaged: 2018-01-19 19:51:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1481878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/varooooom/pseuds/varooooom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Natasha. I need a favor."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Incision

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, I'm jumping on that bandwagon and riding it 'til the end of the line. I regret so many things.

“You know, when you said ‘favor’, I thought you meant doing your hair for the Prom,” she says with the subtle bat of her eyelashes that asks way too many questions about his personal life. He’d be lying if he said he didn’t miss it, just a little bit.

“I never went to my senior Prom,” he says instead, keeping his head up and stride as fast as he can manage while still appearing relaxed, unhurried ( of which, he is neither, and she already knows anyway ). The hallways in his apartment complex have never seemed longer.

“Yeah? No one good enough to dance with Steve Rogers?”

“No one that wouldn’t step on me and break a foot.” She doesn’t react beyond blinking, but he’s learned to read her; she forgets that he used to be fragile, once upon a time. Bucky brought home a record of Fred Astaire’s newest that they couldn’t afford to see and a few bottles of Coke to have their own celebration instead. Steve keeps that one to himself along with the rest of his fondest memories and changes the topic. “How’s Barton?”

She sighs, theatrical and genuine, “Insufferable. You haven’t seen a man bored to death until you watch the world’s greatest sharpshooter reassemble a toaster from four-hundred yards just because he can.”

“That bad, huh?”

“He named it. I can hear him yelling at Bart when he burns his morning toast.” 

Steve chuckles, and it’s almost easy, for a moment. Almost close to pretending things are normal and good and this is just a casual visit between - well, as close as a ninety-six year old super soldier and a lethal down to the toes master spy can get to friends. But Natasha stops at the end of the hall, when his apartment door is in sight and she knows they’re far enough away that anyone nearby won’t be able to overhear them.

“Look, Steve -”

“I know,” he interrupts, then glances at her guiltily. Twenty-first century or not, it’s still rude to interrupt a woman speaking. “I know, I’m sorry. I just didn’t know who else to trust with this.”

She stares him in the eyes, that disconcerting thing she does when she’s measuring him up, trying to understand the way he sees the world in polychromatic when she’s still struggling with the different shades of gray. It’s the unspoken ‘ _why_ ’, so Steve just waits patiently for her to find an answer to suit the situation.

“I don’t know how much help I can be. This is kind of above my paygrade.”

“You found a new job?”

“You know what I mean.” He smiles weakly and she glances away to the door. The look in her eyes isn’t _fear_ ( as far as he knows, she’s only afraid of one thing, and neither of them has seen it since the helicarrier ), but it speaks of uncertainty in a way Steve can only guess comes from experience. It’s part of why he called her first.

“I won’t ask you to do anything you don’t want to, I just - we need a place to start. I thought you might have an idea or two.”

She nods, “Or two,” and Steve can hear the threat in it. It stings a little, but it’s not misplaced. When he doesn’t give her a retort, she looks back at him with the same perplexity as before. Steve is just full of surprises. “I’ll try.”

“Thank you,” he says without the sigh he wants to release. As always, she hears it anyway.

“Don’t thank me yet.”

* * *

He’s still sitting where he was when Steve left for the airport, where he’s spent most of his time since he showed up at Steve’s door in the middle of the night and said ‘ _I know_.’ Steve doesn’t have a mighty need for sleep anymore, courtesy of Erskine’s serum and a seventy-year nap, so it doesn’t bother him much take the seat next to him on the couch and spend the nights with whatever’s on that nobody’s watching.

On one particularly special evening, he halfway turned to him with his brows furrowed and muttered, ‘ _Is it just like old times_?’ Steve’s heart might’ve broken if he hadn’t left it in the Potomac.

“Bucky?”

He blinks, runs his tongue along his lip, and looks up at Steve first before taking in Natasha. Recognition hits him like a bus, and he looks the part of _wounded_.

“The woman from the bridge,” he says quietly, almost a whisper. Steve hates the look of contrition that he wears, like a child under reproach. He’d have the blood of every Hydra agent that played a part in the Winter Soldier’s engineering on his hands if Bucky hadn’t gotten there first. “I shot you.”

“As I remember it, I tried to garrotte you first. We’ll call it even,” she responds neatly, stepping closer into the room when he doesn’t flinch at the reminder. He watches her movements closely and Steve can’t find any signs of fight in him. A good start, if there is one. But then he shakes his head.

“No.” He frowns, bemused, and his eyes wander to her hip. “I _shot_ you.”

Natasha’s inhale is probably the loudest exclamation of surprise Steve will ever hear from her, and her eyes show more than simple perplexity when she looks up at him.

“I told you. He remembers everything, just … not in the right order.” He glances back down to Bucky and feels his stomach drop into the soles of his feet. 

His eyes have blown wide with panic, staring down at his hands like he’s not sure which is his, which is real. His breathing comes short and flighty. Steve remembers having asthma attacks that felt like anxiety attacks and how sometimes they bled into each other, but they always ended with Bucky on his knees, reminding him to ‘ _breathe, buddy, come on_.’

Steve drops. “Bucky,” he says, holding his hands up they way you might approaching a frightened animal, and he tries very very hard not to make the comparison. “Buck, look at me, hey.”

When he does, the bus come back for round two. “I shot you too. How many times was it? I shot you -”

“Hey, stay with me,” Steve begs. He comes dangerously close to him but he doesn’t care, doesn’t pay attention to Natasha stiffening behind him as he kneels right in front of Bucky and tries to take his hands away. He doesn’t believe that Bucky will hurt him, not now. He does fight back though, however weakly, and keeps repeating in a rush ‘ _You were dying, you were dead, how many times was it_?’ until Steve gets both hands on his cheeks. He closes his eyes like he’s waiting for a blow to land, and Steve once again wishes there was someone to stab for doing this to him.

“I’m right here, I’m okay,” he insists, letting his thumbs stroke Bucky’s cheeks to give him something softer than memories to fall back on. “Right here with you, pal, stay with me. Come on.”

His hands fall to his lap but his eyes are still racing back and forth between Steve’s like he doesn’t quite believe them and his breathing doesn’t slow, won’t. The first few tears have only just started rolling, his mouth working to form wordless gasps, when Natasha joins Steve in kneeling at his side; he startles to find her pulling her shirt off.

“Look,” she says firmly, taking one of Bucky’s hands ( the real one, the flesh and blood and pain one ) to place it on her - _oh, Lord_ \- chest. Steve’s cheeks burn and he starts to pull away, confused, but her other hand grips his knee tightly ( maybe there is more than one thing she’s afraid of ). “ _Look_.”

Steve looks from her to Bucky, where he’s staring at his own hand in just as much bewilderment, so Steve follows him down to where his fingers graze the gnarled scar on Natasha’s shoulder that’s a dead ringer for a gunshot wound. It quiets him in an instant, though his eyes stay wide as he’s still fighting back panic and guilt and disgust.

Her voice softens, “You shot me here.” She moves his hand down to her hip, which does absolutely nothing for the heat in Steve’s face. Stark is probably laughing his ass off at this entire ordeal somewhere. “And here. They’re scars now. Steve has some too.”

“But I’m not taking my shirt off,” he interjects. Bucky almost smiles, which makes it almost worth it. Natasha doesn’t shift even to breathe; this must be what she looks like when she’s on a mission. Was.

Steve seems to have a knack for pulling people back into the service.

“We have scars because we’re still alive, Barnes. We aren’t your ghosts.” Bucky’s eyes drop back to his lap, the idea swallowing hard in his throat. Natasha lets go of his hand and Steve asks for it wordlessly, rewarded instead with Bucky touching his cheek the same way he had just a moment ago. The pain in his eyes fades to wonder tainted with the remnants of profound sadness. A soldier’s eyes. It’s almost normal, but Steve won’t be breathing a sigh of relief on this one.

“I can’t tell,” he confesses. There are faces beyond Steve and Natasha that would listen, if they could, but a lot of prayers go unheard. “I know, I remember, but I can’t - it doesn’t make sense when they’re all around me.”

“I see them too sometimes,” Natasha says quietly. Her fingers relax from where they might’ve bruised Steve’s leg seventy-five years ago to pull her shirt back on. It’s the most honest he’s ever seen her, because she wears the Widow’s mask well even when the suit’s been retired for over a year, and he hasn’t gotten the chance to ask about her new cover. It might be the first time he’s heard her speak.

“But they’re not real,” Steve supplies, knowing too well that the stoic distance she puts back in her eyes has ended her part in all this. Besides, it’s not like assassins are the only ones haunted by the things they’ve done. He won’t pretend he understands, because his actions have always been _his_ , but on at least this one thing, he can relate. “We’re real, Bucky. And so are you.”

A moment of silence passes between all three of them as they wait to see if it’ll sink in. Bucky pulls his hand back and stares at it for a moment, flexing his fingers and testing his grasp. Shaky, at best, but it’s a start. He looks back up to Steve and deadpans, “Are you sure you don’t want to take your shirt off?”

Steve laughs and it almost feels like he might cry instead. Natasha smiles and rolls her eyes, getting back on her feet to leave.

“Yeah, you two are going to be just fine.”

**Author's Note:**

> “How’s the Captain holding up?”
> 
> Natasha leans back and props her feet up on the dash, smirks a little when Clint doesn’t reprimand her like the aforementioned prude might because at least he knows she could take him even in a moving vehicle.
> 
> “Seemed well enough when I left, but we know how well that holds up in New York.”
> 
> Clint’s fingers drum against the steering wheel. It’s a new nervous tic he’s picked up in the time they’ve been on vacation. Bad habit for a sharpshooter; she makes a mental note to start keeping a ruler on her. Countdown to explosion in five, four, three …
> 
> “I still don’t understand why I couldn’t come with you. Any job important enough for you to go back to the States is important enough for me, too.”
> 
> “Did you get _that_ lonely in five days?”
> 
> “ _No_.” A beat. “Bart passed on the second day, it’s been a rough week.”
> 
> “Maybe you shouldn’t fire the coils from across a dirt lot next time.”
> 
> He drops his forehead to the steering wheel with a groan. Natasha grins and turns to look out the window, watch blue skies and light clouds pass them by. Maybe they’ll all be fine, eventually.


End file.
